Partisanship in the appropriations process: Fenno Revisited

The incremental budgeting literature has long suggested that the appropriations process is largely nonpartisan in character, a conclusion that is often, inappropriately we believe, based on Fenno's (1966) findings in Power of the Purse. We systematically reexamine Fenno's interpretation of partisanship as a supplement to the dominant mstitutional roles that govern appropriations politics. Analysis of variance tests of the Fenno data provide strong support for the conclusion that partisanship plays an important-if secondary— role in budgetary politics.